Jensalittleloopy Cooks the Oldies: Pineapple Surprise

Happy New Year! May the force be with you, live long and prosper, and fight the power. I am really looking forward to a kickass year and I hope you are too!

Without further ado…oops I did it again! Fun with gelatin! (No this will not be all gelatin all the time, this was just a quickie to go with our lucky New Year’s Day pork.)

Not from a cookbook this time, but rather an old advertisement. “You make it right in the Dole Pineapple can!” LOVE IT!

Instead of lime gelatin, though, I decided to use cherry flavor, because I was planning on slapping pineapple rings and maraschino cherries onto the ham and I thought this would be a cute addition to our very festive slapped together because adult humans (read: ME) were tired New Year’s Eve dinner. So I totally planned ahead. Ham. Jello in a pineapple can. Yes that IS TOO dinner what is your problem even?

ANYWAY.

Things were looking good. I drained the pineapple juice from the can. (What is a No. 2 can? They don’t sell those anymore so this recipe was obviously created by dinosaurs. I used a 20 oz. can instead because there was a 2 on it.)

I also dropped a bunch of maraschino cherries into the center of the rings because I thought that might be supercute.

I made the sugar free cherry Royal gelatin according to the package directions, and then poured it into the can.

OOOooOOOooOoooOOOooh.

There was lots leftover, so I also made dinosaurs (an homage to the person who wrote this recipe) and part of a Tardis (because obvious).

A few hours later, things were looking pretty damn spiffy!

*drumroll*

After placing the can in a bit of hot water for a few minutes to loosen the sides, I removed the bottom of the can with a can opener, and gently slid my glorious Pineapple Surprise out of the can.

OMG.

WTF.

Where did I go wrong?!?!?!

Do you remember that movie Poltergeist? Where Carol Ann was trapped with the ghosties and they hired Tangina & Co. and they sent Diane into the light to rescue Carol Ann? And when they were pulled out they were covered in ghost goo or whatever like this:

My fucking pineapple rings were abducted by ghosts!!! This is what I get for going out on New Year’s Eve instead of staying home like I usually do! Totally preventable tragedy.

Aside from the obvious “abducted by ghosts” explanation, I figure I *might* have screwed up in one of the following ways:

A 20 oz. can is not the equivalent of a No. 2 can of pineapple.

My can did not say Hawaiian Pineapple, so it must have been defective and/or from some other place with inferior pineapples.

I did not drain the juice from the can well enough, and the remaining juice kept the gelatin from setting.

I let the gelatin warm up too much before I removed it from the can.

This recipe does not work because if it did everyone would be making this all of the time because it is a fucking awesome idea.

So annoying. Delicious, but annoying. Really, pineapple and the cherry gelatin totally go together, and the maraschino cherries were a welcome addition to the party. Kiddo LOVED it.

RIP, pineapple surprise. You were delicious, but not so pretty to look at. I’m sorry I failed you.

And as I was writing this I dug up the actual recipe.

OH FUDDDDGGGGGEEEE. You know where I went wrong? The part of the directions where it said (underlined, even!) to use HALF of the amount of water I would usually use.

BWAAAAAHAHA! Man, I totally screwed this up! It was delicious, but still…not pretty! I am going to hopskipjump my ass straight to the kitchen to try this again.

Dammit. Of course I have a fail on the second time I do a Cooking the Oldies post. Will try harder next time, kids. 😉

UPDATE! Oh yes, this was such an epic fail it appeared on Pinterest Fail! I am so proud!

So many pins, so little time!

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I'm on a mission to empower women to have crafty misadventures by encouraging them to make time for creativity; try new products and techniques; and have fun while making lots of mistakes. My core belief is that any creative project can be improved by adding a cute face to it. Read More →

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